In case you missed any of these updates, we’ve put together a roundup of the top highlights from 2024:

1. Visualize your data the way you need

Easily customize your Databoards and charts to highlight the most important information.

• New Visualizations: Select 5 new visualization types and add multiple comparison periods
• Ad Creatives: View your ad creatives alongside your copy and metrics to better analyze your campaigns.
• Granulation: Set weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly granulation for custom date ranges
• Benchmark Data: Add benchmark data directly onto your dashboards, to see how you’re performing compared to other companies.
• Dimension Colors: Assign colors to each dimension on the chart, making it easier for viewers to understand and engage with the data.
• Median Line: Add a median line to your chart to more accurately see where the “middle point” of your data lies.
• New Date Range Setting: Set a fixed start date, and have the end date adjust automatically. This way, your Databoards will always show you the entire duration of a campaign, from the start date to the most recent data.

2. Save time and create, edit, and update faster than ever

Get more done in less time with new capabilities to help you save time with your reporting tasks.

• Bulk Account Actions: Perform actions in your account in bulk, like adding metrics to your Databoards, marking metrics as favorites, applying tags, and more.
• Connections: Login once to connect or re-authenticate accounts from the same platform.
• Databoard Loop templates: Save Databoard Loops as account templates so you can reuse them later.
• Master Date Range for Databoard Loops: Apply the same Date Range setting to all Databoards in a Loop.
• Push template changes to all Databoards: Update all the Databoards created from a template with one click.
• Switch visualizations on the fly: Easily switch visualization types to find the best way to represent your data.

3. Make more informed decisions

Get deeper insights into your metrics and KPIs and use that to make better plans and improve your performance.

• Metric Insights: Access all the information about a specific metric from one place, including Goals, Forecasts, Benchmarks, and more.
• Save and adjust Forecasts: Apply seasonality to your Forecasts, then save them to track them over time.
• Anomaly Detection: Quickly find and analyze historical anomalies in your data.
• Benchmarks: Benchmark a specific metric to see how you compare to companies like yours. Quickly see where you’re ahead of the curve, and where there’s room to improve.

4. Share Reports more easily

Sharing Reports with stakeholders just got simpler and more interactive. With our new sharing settings, you can generate a public link to your report, allowing anyone to view it on-demand. Recipients can easily click through each slide and interact with the charts to further explore the data. And coming soon, you’ll be able to present slides in full-screen to present reports to your clients or company.

5. Manage your data with confidence

Easily manage who has access to your data and how it’s shared. We’ve introduced new features to give you more control over your account and data permissions.

• Advanced Security Management add-on: Gain more control and visibility over users and their account activities, and maintain compliance with internal security processes.
• Public link sharing: Choose whether a Databoard, Databoard Loop or Report is accessible through a public URL or internal link.

6. Choose when your data gets updated

To give you more control over your data syncs, we’ve introduced new capabilities that let you choose how and when your data is refreshed.

• Data Sync Frequency Selection: Pick how often Databox pulls data from your Data Sources. Pick from a range of intervals like every 24 hours, 8 hours, 4 hours, or every 60 minutes.
• 15-minute Sync Add-on: Easily add or remove the 15-minute sync for specific Data Sources.
• Instant Refresh: See your most recent data by manually refreshing your Databoards.

7. Connect data from more software

To help you create a single source of truth for your business, we’ve added new integrations for marketing, product, and financial teams, as well as over 100 new metrics.

• Marketing: Ahrefs Enterprise, Pinterest, Pinterest Ads, TikTok Organic, Captivate, Transistor
• Product: Amplitude, ChartMogul
• Financial: Freshbooks

And to make syncing custom data even easier, you now have the option to upload your Excel files directly to Databox – without having to manage permissions or cloud access.

There’s more to come!

With 3 months still to go in 2024, we’re far from finished! Our team is continually working on new features and improvements to give you even more value from Databox.

Here’s a quick sneak peek at what’s coming next: a new way to present Reports, improved goal-setting and tracking capabilities, smart alerts with anomaly detection, local metric correlations, and more!

If you’re not already taking advantage of these updates, book a call with our team to learn how you can use them to improve your business’s performance.

New to Databox? Start a free trial today to see how Databox can help you centralize your data and make more informed decisions. From customizable dashboards to forecasting tools, you’ll have everything you need to succeed as your business grows.

Stay tuned for more exciting updates!

The post Product Highlights: Explore the Latest Features and Updates of 2024 appeared first on Databox.

What’s Changing

Let’s say you want to connect an Integration like GA4, and pull data from 3 different “properties” ( = 3 different Data Sources). 

Before, that required you to authenticate your Google account 3 times.

Now, you’ll only have to log in and authenticate the Integration once. Once you do, you can select the Data Sources within that Integration you want the authentication to apply for.

For example, you’ll connect and authenticate GA4 once, then select and add each of the 3 properties (Data Sources) you want to pull data from. That’s it!

What This Means To You

This change brings you several benefits. Here are a few, using GA4 as an example…

1. Save time reauthenticating: if GA4 requires reauthentication, just log in once to continue pulling data from all 3 data sources (instead of logging in 3 separate times) 
2. Add new Data Sources on the fly: once you’ve connected GA4 once, you can add additional Data Sources (a couple extra properties) anytime using that same authentication.
3. Manage all connections from screen: view the status of each connection, the Data Sources associated with it, and which connections need reauthentication.
4. Securely share access to data: securely share connections and Data Sources with users or clients in your account, without needing to share your authentication credentials.

How To Sync Data To Databox (New & Improved Way!)

We’ve had to restructure how Data Source connections work by dividing the process into two parts: making a Connections and selecting a Data Source. 

Now, when syncing data to Databox, you: 

1. Select an Integration: a data provider that can be connected to Databox, like Google Analytics 4, HubSpot or Stripe. 
2. Make/select a Connection: the link between Databox and your chosen Integration. 
3. Add a Data Source: Pick the exact data you need, like a property in GA4 or a store in Shopify.

Managing Your Connections in The Account Management Application (AMA)

All your connections are now consolidated under the Connections screen in the Account Management Application. Here you’ll be able to:

• View Data Sources: See which Data Sources you’ve selected for each connection.
• Check the Connection Status: Monitor the status of each connection.
• Manage Authentication: Easily handle authentication for each connection and all linked Data Sources.

For example, if a connection fails due to changes in user permissions or issues with the API provider, you’ll be able to re-authenticate multiple Data Sources at once.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) 

1) Will this change impact pricing?

No – as before, you’ll be charged based on the number of Data Sources in your account. Formerly, we called these “Data Source Connections” and now we’ll refer to them as “Data Sources”.

2) When will these changes take effect?

We plan to roll out these changes to all Integrations in the coming weeks. 

3) Will this stop my data from syncing with Databox?

Users who have connected Google Sheets and Excel via Google Drive will need to re-connect these sources before September 1st. If not reconnected by then, data syncs may be paused automatically after this date.

To resume syncing data from Google Sheets or Excel via Google Drive, simply re-establish the connection with these platforms.

The post Improvements To The Way You Connect Your Data to Databox appeared first on Databox.

Driving traffic and leads is important. But, understanding where they came from, how they engage with your website, and ultimately what led to a conversion or purchase (amongst many other insights) is necessary for building a repeatable and sustainable marketing program.

The challenge? As marketing technology has exploded, digital marketing reporting has gotten more complicated.

In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about marketing reporting, including:

• What is Marketing Reporting?
• What is a Marketing Report?
• The Types of Marketing Reports
• What Should A Marketing Report Include?
• How to Create a Marketing Report?
• Marketing KPIs and Metrics
• Marketing Reporting Dashboards and Templates
• Reporting on Output vs. Outcome Metrics
• Bonus: White-Labeled Marketing Reports

What is Marketing Reporting?

Marketing reporting is an exercise that involves regularly sharing updates on key performance indicators (KPIs), progress toward goals, as well as next steps with your team in order to identify priorities and make adjustments.

Reporting is typically done through regular marketing meetings, most commonly weekly and monthly. A marketing reporting meeting typically involves sharing numerous marketing reports in order to present a comprehensive view of the strategy and how it is performing.

What should be included in your marketing reports? We cover that, and more, below.

Related article: 17 Marketing Report Examples for Sharing Performance With Your Team.

What is a Marketing Report?

A marketing report is a visual representation, usually presented in a dashboard or slide deck, of your marketing metrics and KPIs and their progress over a specific time period.

One reporting meeting may contain several marketing reports. In fact, it should.

For example, you might present separate marketing reports for your content marketing, paid advertising, and social media efforts. Each report would display marketing KPIs specific to that function.

This will help you uncover meaningful, actionable insights that will help your team identify opportunities and make adjustments.

Below is a marketing dashboard example that helps to communicate current performance, progress toward goals, and month-over-month comparisons to help inform and prioritize next steps.

Types of Marketing Reports

While there are any number of ways you could organize your digital marketing reports, we think it makes the most sense to organize them according to how frequently they would be shared.

There are, of course, situations when you need to create a specific KPI report for a particular purpose.

But, for the most part, here are the most common marketing report types as well as the specific reports you would share during a specified time range.

• Monthly marketing reports
• Weekly marketing reports
• Daily marketing reports
• Annual marketing reports

PRO TIP: How Are Users Engaging on My Site? Which Content Drives the Most Online Activity?

If you want to discover how visitors engage with your website, and which content drives the most engagement and conversions, there are several on-page events and metrics you can track from Google Analytics 4 that will get you started:

1. Sessions by channel. Which channels are driving the most traffic to your website? 
2. Average session duration. How long do visitors spend on your website on average? 
3. Pageviews and pageviews by page. Which pages on your website are viewed the most? 
4. Total number of users. How many users engaged with your website? 
5. Engagement rate. Which percentage of your website visitors have interacted with a piece of content and spent a significant amount of time on the site?
6. Sessions conversion rate. How many of your website visitors have completed the desired or expected action(s) and what percentage of them completed the goals you’ve set in Google Analytics 4?

And more…

Now you can benefit from the experience of our Google Analytics 4 experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template showing the most important KPIs for monitoring visitor engagement on your website. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in marketing reports, and best of all, it’s free!

You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.

To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Get the template 

Step 2: Connect your Google Analytics account with Databox. 

Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.

Get the template free

Monthly Marketing Reports

Monthly marketing reports are a management tool used by most marketers and agencies to demonstrate relevant marketing results on a monthly basis. In a monthly marketing report, we usually find metrics focused on web analytics and campaign performance.

Web Analytics Report

A web analytics report displays the data derived from the monitoring of your website performance. In this context of KPIs vs metrics, you will typically encounter the following metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) – online conversions, bounce rates, page views, referral traffic, etc. You can see some examples of web analytics dashboards here.

Digital Marketing Performance Report

A digital marketing performance report provides you with a complete overview of all your paid advertisement campaigns’ performance. It helps you discover the amount you have spent and if you were able to stay within a planned budget while still reaching your pre-set goals. It should also include the CPA metric so that you know how much you spent to get each new customer. You can see some examples of performance dashboards here.

Weekly Marketing Reports

You can view weekly marketing reports as a status check for your goals and campaigns. They are used to generate actionable marketing insights on a medium-term and weekly basis. In the case of weekly marketing reports, the main metrics to watch are traffic and engagements. 

Website Traffic Report

A Website Traffic Report provides you with data on the number of people that have visited your site. Monitoring your website traffic can help you discover where your traffic is coming from and how it’s engaging with your site. You can find this and other useful data in your reports. You can see more examples of SEO dashboards here.

Blog Traffic Report

 A Blog Traffic Report should be a weekly event, as your blog traffic tends to fall after the first week, after the promotions and boosts end. But continual monitoring of the blog traffic via blog traffic reports can show you what is your optimal number of visits over the course of a month, and longer. Check out some examples of content marketing dashboards here.

Social Media Report

A monthly Social Media Engagement Report is a great way to keep track of your growth and improve your social strategy accordingly. Understanding how your content performs through tracking account metrics and insights over time is key to building a successful social media strategy for your business. See examples of social media dashboards here.

Online Advertising Performance 

An Online Advertising Performance Report provides you data on how your online ads are fairing. By analyzing it on a weekly level you will ensure that your ad investments are stable or adjust them timely if they need more optimization to deliver specified targets. See examples of PPC dashboards, including paid ads templates and paid search templates, here.

Daily Marketing Reports

In most cases, daily marketing reports are used for internal company purposes. Their main goal is to spot changes or threats as they appear and react immediately. A daily marketing report should include some of the following:

Average Session Duration Report

Average session duration provides you data regarding user engagement from different sources and how useful your content is for each user. 

SEO Overview Report

SEO Overview, when reported on a daily level, shows you the increase and decrease of your site metrics, which can help you see, on a daily level, what has a positive or negative impact on your SEO efforts. 

Keyword Rankings Report

Keyword Rankings should be reported daily as they fluctuate every single day. If this is something relevant for your company and your clients daily reports are crucial. 

Annual Reports

The Annual Marketing Report is meant to deliver the milestones and KPIs (key performance indicators) that you and your clients need to know. It helps you define the key successes, to evaluate what could be improved, and to communicate all that with your team and your clients.

Marketing CMO Report

A CMO usually reports to the CEO. These reports should represent everything the marketing team has accomplished over a course of a year. Whether they have hit all the set goals and what were the possible shortcomings. It is there to inform the company management of the overall success of the in-house marketing team. See specific examples of executive dashboards here. This can be built using an executive dashboard software.

Marketing KPI Report

With the annual Marketing KPI Report, you can see the performance of your online marketing campaigns and monitor trends over the course of the previous year. 

What Should a Marketing Report Include?

Marketing reporting software provides you with actionable reports and easy-to-read snapshots of your campaigns. What to include in your marketing reports depends on your goals and what you are looking to achieve with your marketing efforts.

But, generally speaking, a good marketing report should cover the following:

• Output Metrics: Output metrics measure your activities. They are direct measurements of the work you’re doing on a daily or weekly basis. Examples would be things like the number of sales calls, number of blog posts published, etc.
• Outcome Metrics: Outcome metrics are typically the metrics that companies obsess over. These metrics are the ones that are shared with stakeholders like bosses, clients, and investors. Metrics like traffic, leads, and sales would be considered “outcome metrics.”
• Quality Metrics: Quality metrics are things like visit-to-signup conversion rates or other metrics that measure the overall quality of an outcome metric like Sessions.
• Progress Toward Goals: No marketing report is complete without a visualization of your progress toward your goals. Are you on or off track? That should be clearly represented so the team can adjust accordingly.
• Comparisons: Are you growing month-over-month? Comparing current performance to last month, quarter, or year is an easy way of measuring progress and growth.

Related article: 34 Marketing Metrics to Include in Every Marketing Report

How Often Should You Share a Marketing Report?

This depends on the type of report and the preset agreement you have with your team or your clients. 

• Monthly reporting allows you to gather enough data to see how changes have affected marketing results while ensuring that underperforming campaigns don’t run for too long. They are ideal for showing your clients the progress you made without overwhelming them. 
• Weekly reporting is great for your team, and you can see the current changes and adjust strategies accordingly.
• Real-time reporting is essential for retail as companies must be able to analyze real-time data to make more informed, accurate decisions. 

Why is Marketing Reporting Important?

Marketing reports are the outcome of your data-driven marketing. Their main purpose is to help interpret all the data you have collected through easily understandable visualizations. Marketing reporting helps you build context around your data and present your efforts and successes to your clients in a manner that will be clear to them. 

Here are just some of the things marketing reporting enables you to do:

1. Track progress towards marketing goals

Regular marketing reporting helps you obtain data that shows how close you are to reaching your pre-set marketing goals. Based on that data, you can make the necessary changes to ensure that all the goals are met in time. 

2. Have a clear view of all the outputs and outcomes

Marketing outputs, in the end, enable marketing outcomes. Marketing Reporting lets you track both and see when and if there is a need for adjustment so that you can reach the desired target. 

3. Identify emerging trends and be able to react to them quickly

Marketing Reporting enables you to keep a close eye on the current and emerging trends and to act on them in real-time. Thus improving your chances of reaching the pre-set marketing goals.

4. Identify the best performing content (and vice versa)

We want to know what works and what doesn’t so that we can replicate successful tactics. By analyzing what was successful through Marketing Reporting, we can build a far more stable marketing strategy for the future. 

5. Better marketing forecasting

When we have the right data, we can make educated predictions regarding some of our desired marketing outcomes. Marketing growth forecasting includes marketing reports that pay special attention to the following – sources of traffic, target audience, click-through rate (CT), conversion rate, number of transactions, the value per transaction, cost per transaction, and return on ad spend. 

Benefits of Marketing Reporting

Marketing reporting offers several key benefits that can significantly enhance your marketing efforts and overall business performance:

1. Improved Decision-Making

Marketing reporting provides data-driven insights that enable better decision-making. By analyzing trends and performance metrics, marketers can make informed choices about resource allocation, campaign strategies, and overall marketing direction. This leads to more effective marketing initiatives and a higher return on investment (ROI).

2. Better Resource Allocation

With clear visibility into which marketing efforts are yielding the best results, teams can allocate their budget and human resources more effectively. This ensures that investments are focused on high-performing areas while underperforming initiatives can be optimized or discontinued, maximizing the efficiency of your marketing spend.

3. Enhanced Team Alignment

Regular reporting keeps all team members and stakeholders aligned on goals, progress, and challenges. This transparency fosters collaboration and ensures everyone is working towards the same objectives. It also helps in identifying any bottlenecks or areas needing support, enhancing overall team performance.

Common Challenges in Marketing Reporting

While marketing reporting is essential, it comes with its own set of challenges that marketers need to address:

1. Data Overload

The abundance of available data can be overwhelming. Marketers often struggle to identify which metrics are truly important, leading to information overload and difficulty in extracting actionable insights. Focusing on key performance indicators (KPIs) aligned with business objectives is crucial to overcome this challenge.

2. Integrating Multiple Data Sources

Marketing data often comes from various platforms and tools, such as social media channels, email marketing software, CRM systems, and web analytics. Integrating these diverse data sources into cohesive reports can be technically challenging and time-consuming, potentially leading to data silos and inconsistent reporting.

3. Ensuring Data Accuracy

Maintaining data accuracy across multiple platforms and reporting periods is crucial. Inaccurate or inconsistent data can lead to misguided decisions and erode trust in the reporting process. Implementing data validation processes and using reliable tools can help ensure the integrity of your reports.

How to Create a Marketing Report

An effective marketing report needs to be both accessible and actionable. This means that in addition to the numerical figures themselves, it’s helpful to have a data visualization to go along with each metric in your marketing report.

While most marketing technology tools boast their own analytics, this requires you to log into dozens of separate tools in order to get a comprehensive view of performance.

This is why dashboard software like Databox (Okay, we’re biased. But, it’s free.) are helpful in that they allow you to collate marketing metrics from multiple sources into one place.

To build your marketing report, you first should understand some of the most common sections.

Every report should include Outcome Metrics of some kind. Things like Sessions and Signups.

Then, you should also include drill-down metrics that allow viewers to better understand the performance of a specific metric. For example, instead of simply tracking Sessions, you should include a drill-down metric that measures Sessions by channel source in order to see which channels are paying off.

Next, you should also include a quality metric of some kind––a metric that allows you to measure to overall quality of an outcome metric like Sessions. For Sessions, we’d recommend something like visit-to-conversion rate.

Finally, you should also track Output Metrics that show the activities your team has executed on. This allows you to draw correlation between activities and results. This way, you can ensure that your team is only spending time on high leverage marketing activities.

In the example below, you can see “Total blog posts published” as the Output Metric.

Or, you could even add a visualization that measures the volume of each content type your team has published. This way, you can draw correlation between results and the specific types of content your team publishes.

Customizing Reports for Different Stakeholders

Different stakeholders have varying information needs. Customizing marketing reports ensures that each audience receives relevant and actionable insights:

1. Executive-Level Reports

For C-suite executives and senior management, focus on high-level metrics that demonstrate ROI and overall business impact. These reports should be concise, highlighting key performance indicators aligned with strategic business objectives. Visualizations that quickly convey trends and outcomes are particularly effective at this level.

2. Team-Specific Reports

Create tailored reports for different teams, such as content marketing, paid advertising, or social media. These reports should delve deeper into metrics relevant to their specific functions, allowing for detailed analysis and actionable insights at the team level. This approach helps teams identify areas for improvement and celebrate successes pertinent to their roles.

Advanced Marketing Reporting Techniques

1. Predictive Analytics in Marketing Reports

Predictive analytics leverages historical data combined with machine learning algorithms to forecast future trends and outcomes. By using predictive analytics, marketers can anticipate customer behavior and market changes, allowing them to adjust strategies proactively and improve overall campaign performance. This approach helps identify potential opportunities and risks before they fully materialize, enabling data-driven strategic decisions that can give companies a competitive edge.

How Databox Helps: Databox offers a Forecasting feature that enables you to predict future performance of key metrics. By analyzing historical data, Databox provides accurate forecasts, allowing you to make data-driven decisions and adjust your marketing strategies proactively. (Databox)

2. AI-Driven Insights for Marketing Reports

Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies excel at processing and analyzing large volumes of data to uncover hidden patterns that human analysis might overlook. By incorporating AI-driven tools into your marketing reports, you can gain more precise and actionable insights. These tools can enhance decision-making by providing data-backed recommendations, such as optimizing ad spend or identifying the most impactful marketing channels, ultimately maximizing ROI.

How Databox Helps: Databox’s Generative AI functionality provides comprehensive AI performance summaries along with tailored recommendations on how to improve performance. By leveraging AI, Databox helps you gain valuable context and insights into your metrics, goals, and dashboards, enabling more effective marketing strategies.

Which Marketing KPIs and Metrics Should I Report On?

Marketing metrics are specific measurements of the actions or behaviors exhibited on your website. This would include metrics like sessions, bounce rate, average session duration, etc.

Marketing KPIs are an agreed-upon set of metrics that have been determined to be of importance to your company’s goals and overall business. This could also include metrics like sessions, but more commonly KPIs are reserved for Outcome and Output Metrics that have proven to have an impact on a company’s revenue growth.

In short, while all KPIs are metrics, not all metrics at KPIs.

Below, we’ve included some of the more common marketing KPIs and metrics that teams track and report on.

• Web analytics metrics
• Performance metrics
• Website traffic metrics
• Blog traffic metrics
• Social media metrics
• Content quality control metrics

Web Analytics Metrics

Simply put Website Analytics Metrics tell you whether your website is getting results for your business. Website Analytics includes the collection, reporting, and analysis of website data. You can then go on and use that website data to determine the success or failure of your pre-set goals and to drive strategy and improve user experience. 

• Sessions – a group of user interactions with your website that takes place within a designated time frame. It underlines usage data and the key to retention and serves to identify the steps a user takes while interacting with your website.

• Visits – the full-time span that a Visitor spends on your website. This metric serves to measure website traffic volume over a time period. 

• Avg. Session Duration – the sum of the duration of each session during the date range you specify divided by the total number of sessions. This metric is a great starting point for better understanding and improving your customer journey.

• Pages per Session – show you how many pieces of content (Web pages) a single visitor or a group of visitors views on your website. A high number means that you offer great content that inspires visitors to stay and continue exploring your website while a low one can mean that either your content is lacking or your website’s design is preventing visitors from navigating around it with ease. 

• Pageviews – the total number of pages viewed. It can provide an indication of how popular a page or post is. Page Views is best used in combination with other metrics for a more definitive insight. 

• Goal Completions – show the number of completed goals. This metric helps you track how successful your marketing efforts are based on the goals to set and complete over the predefined time period. 

• Traffic Sources –  the origin or source of a visit to your website. By tracking Traffic Sources metrics you can determine where most of your traffic is coming from and which sources are driving the least traffic to your website. 

• Bounce Rate –  the number of single-page sessions (bounces) divided by the total number of sessions. It is important to keep the Bounce Rate as low as possible, which can be done by improved page content and design. 

Marketing performance metrics

Marketing performance metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) represent a source of useful data for not just marketing professionals but also the company CEO, sales department, and the senior management team. They can all use marketing KPIs in order to get a clear insight into how marketing activities and spending impact the company’s bottom line. 

This is especially important since more and more marketers are required to show a return on investment (ROI) on their activities. And performance metrics are here to help you understand the extent of how much marketing spending contributes to profits. Monitoring marketing’s progress towards its annual goals

By carefully and accurately establishing marketing performance metrics marketers can help companies achieve customer satisfaction and monitor the progress towards the pre-set goals. 

• CPA by Campaign –  measures the aggregate cost to acquire a single paying customer during a  campaign. It provides you with data regarding how much your new customers are costing you. Based on that data, you can then decide what actions you can take to lower the CPA. 

• CPC by Campaign – the price an advertiser pays a publisher for each click on a link during the duration of a campaign. Tracking this metric is important because the costs can add up quickly, and if you are not careful, you might not see any ROPI from a campaign. 

• Acquisition by Campaign –  the number of acquired new prospects by your campaign. A high Acquisition by Campaign lets you know how successful your campaign has been when it comes to attracting new prospects. 

• Clicks –  the number of times a user clicked on something like your ad. All clicks are counted regardless if they end up at the preset destination. Clicks help you gain insight into how well your ad or page is appealing to people who see it. 

• Impressions – the number of times your content is displayed, regardless of the fact if it was clicked or not. Impressions provide a simple representation of how many people see your ads within a particular channel.

Website traffic metrics

We can define Website Traffic as the number of visitors your site gets in a set timeframe. However. there is a lot more to it. A website traffic metric is viewed as a quantifiable indicator of an aspect of your website’s popularity. There are a lot of different website traffic metrics that you could be tracking, as different metrics tend to answer different questions you might have about the efficiency of your website.

• Users – visitors who have initiated one session with your website or app within a specified period of time. It is important to distinguish between new and returning users. Returning users have a higher conversion rate and new users tend to stay way shorter on your website.

• Pages per Session – the average number of pages viewed by a visitor during a single session. This metric helps you see how compelling your content is to visitors and if it needs significant improvement. 

• % New Sessions – the percentage of first-time visits to your site. It can be viewed as an indirect engagement metric and depending on your goals and business you can decide which course of action you will need to take to steer this in the right direction.
• Top Organic Keywords – the highest-ranked organic keywords used to attract free traffic through search engine optimization. Knowing which Top Organic Keywords to optimize for can significantly improve your SEO efforts.

• Sessions by Source –  the number of sessions displayed by source. This metric can help you see which source drives the most traffic to your website so that you can adjust your marketing efforts accordingly.

• Traffic by Channel  – shows you where most of your website traffic comes from. By tracking Traffic by Channel, you will be able to gain insights into what are the most effective methods to acquire visitors.

Blog traffic metrics

If you want to know how much traffic your blog is attracting, you need certain sets of data to do the calculations. This is where tracking Blog Traffic Metrics comes in, you could bet measuring just traffic to your blog, and in that case, a blog post with 100,000 visits looks like a dream come true. But what if everyone who visited your post left within 15 seconds of the page loading? That is why more metrics need to be included for you to get more precise data. 

• Traffic by Blog Post– how many visitors is a single blog post attracting. Tracking this metric lets you evaluate which blog posts perform better and attract more visitors. Based on that you can construct a strategy of updating old blog posts so that they bring in more traffic. 

• Time on Page – the average amount of time users spent viewing a specific page or set of pages. It helps you determine which pages are keeping visitors’ attention. This is especially helpful with blog pages as you can see which topics the visitors find insightful and engaging. 

• Signups –  show the number of new visitors that sign up for your blog newsletter or a paid subscription. It can show you which CTAs are effective and it is an important piece of information when it comes to tracking your blog’s conversions. 

• Top Blog Posts by Session  – show you on which blog posts visitors spend the most time during their sessions on your website. This can help you gain insight into where most of your visitors spend their time after they come to your website. 

• Top Blog Posts by Signups – show you which blog posts on your blog are generating the most signups. This can help you gain insight into which blog posts are the most effective when it comes to converting your visitors into subscribers.

Social Media Metrics

According to marketing consultant Mike Sonders, social drives an average of only 2.2% of traffic to the top 50 public SaaS companies. There is no doubt about the importance of social media metrics now more than ever. But it is equally important to know which ones you should be tracking. 

• Likes – the number of “votes” your social media page, post, or ad gets. By tracking specific likes, you can see how well your page, post, or ad is performing. 

• Followers – a follower on social media is a user who chooses to see all of another user’s posts in their content feed. Having a significant number of followers means that you have an established brand presence on social media. 

• Comments – a way for your followers on social media to interact with your brand. They help you interact with your flowers, answer questions, and see how engaging your content is, depending on how much commenting it inspires. 

• Reach – the total number of people who see your content. If you consider that Reach is directly related to the number of unique users that are seeing your content, using Reach to optimize your paid campaigns is a great option. 

• Page Views – the number of times a page’s profile has been viewed by people, including people who are logged into that particular social media platform and the ones who aren’t. This metric helps you see what your audience is interested in and if your page content fares well with social media users. 

• Sessions from Social Media – the number of times users were directed to your website through social media. Tracking the Sessions from Social Media is very important if you want to know whether your social media efforts are leading to website visits. 

Thankfully, you can easily track these metrics daily with the help of this social media dashboard software.

Content Quality Control Metrics

By tracking Content Quality Control Metrics you will be able to see how well your content is performing and contributing to downstream metrics like conversions, opportunities, and sales. Some of the content metrics you should consider tracking are as follows:

• Google Keyword Ranking – the position that your website is listed in Google when someone searches that particular phrase or keyword. A ranking of one to ten means that you are on the first page of google search, 10 to 20 on the second, and so on, as search pages have ten hits. Of course, the goal is to be on the first page in the first three hits. Tracking Keyword Rankings can help you better optimize your pages so that they get pushed to some of the more relevant Google search pages. Even a small update means getting from the second to the first page in Google. 
• Visibility – a metric showing how often your website is found on the Internet. Based on your Visibility metric, which should be as high as possible, you should make adjustments to your content, specifically Keyword Rankings so that it increases in time. 

• Domain Authority – According to MOZ, Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how likely a website is to rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). Knowing your site’s DA is very important simply because higher DA sites perform better than lower DA sites. This means that there’s a direct correlation between high DA scores and higher rankings. And we all want high rankings. 

• Goal Competitions – the total number of visitors who have completed all elements defined for a particular goal. If you have adequately configured goals, Google Analytics can provide you with critical information, like the number of conversions and your site or app’s conversion rate.

Marketing Reporting Dashboards and Templates

Building and sharing marketing reporting dashboards is the essence of modern marketing reporting. If you are just starting, using plug-and-play marketing report templates is the best option. Databox has a great selection of Marketing reporting templates for you to choose from, depending on what you want to include in your marketing reporting.

• Marketing Automation Dashboard Templates
• Ecommerce Dashboard Templates
• CRM & Sales Dashboard Templates
• Project Management Dashboard Templates
• Analytics Dashboard Templates
• Help Desk Dashboard Templates
• Social Media Dashboard Templates
• Connectors & Development Dashboard Templates
• Paid Search Dashboard Templates
• Paid Social Dashboard Templates
• Accounting & Payments Dashboard Templates
• Website Marketing & Sales Dashboard Templates
• App Stores Dashboard Templates
• Email Marketing Dashboard Templates
• Video Dashboard Templates

Marketing Automation Dashboard Templates

Marketing automation is defined as the process of utilizing technology to streamline marketing efforts and make them more effective. The current Marketing Automation Databox Templates include:

• HubSpot Marketing Dashboard Template
• Google Analytics: Website Engagement Dashboard Template
• CallRail Overview Dashboard Template
• Marketo Email Marketing Dashboard Template

And many more…

Browse all marketing automation dashboards here.

Ecommerce Dashboard Templates

An eCommerce dashboard can be defined as a hub for important business and performance data. It enables you to get a snapshot view of your business and dive into your most important data. Databox offers a wide range of Ecommerce Templates, here are just some that you can get right now:

• Google Analytics (Ecommerce overview) Dashboard Template
• Shopify Dashboard
• eCommerce Full Funnel Dashboard Template
• WooCommerce (shop overview) Dashboard Template
• Shopify + Fb + GA: Online Sales Dashboard Template

And many more…

Browse all ecommerce dashboards here.

CRM & Sales Dashboard Templates

CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, is an important tool to help you turn a lead into a paying customer. A well designed CRM & Sales Dashboard will help you see where every individual lead is within your sales pipeline. The selection of Databox CRM & Sales Templates definitely has what you are looking for.

• HubSpot CRM Dashboard Template
• Stripe (MRR & Churn) Dashboard Template
• Closed Won Totals (Sales Rep View) Dashboard Template
• CallRail Source & Keyword Performance Dashboard Template
• QuickBooks + HubSpot CRM: Financial Performance Dashboard Template

And many more…

Browse all sales dashboards here.

Project Management Dashboard Templates

A simple definition of a project management dashboard is that it is a data Dashboard containing key performance indicators related to specific projects. There is a great selection of Databox Project Management Templates to choose from.

• Harvest: Time report Dashboard Template
• Asana (Team overview) Dashboard Template
• Jira Dashboard Template

And many more…

Browse all project management dashboards here.

Analytics Dashboard Templates

A great Analytics Dashboard needs to contain all your key indicators of acquisition, retention, and referrals in one place. With Analytics Databox Templates you are bound to find the perfect fit. Here are just some of the options:

• Google Analytics 4 (Website traffic) Dashboard Template
• Targeting, Engagement, Revenue Dashboard Template
• YouTube Watch Time Performance Dashboard Template
• Credo’s Marketing KPIs Dashboard Templates

 And many more…

Help Desk Dashboard Templates

Help Desk Dashboards are a great option in case you are having trouble understanding Help Scout or Drift. Here are just some of the Help Desk Databox Templates:

• Help Scout Mailbox Dashboard Template
• Customer Success Dashboard Template
• HelpScout Docs Report Dashboard Template
• HelpScout for Customer Support Dashboard Template
• HubSpot Service (Tickets Overview) Dashboard Template

And many more…

Browse all help desk dashboards here.

Social Media Dashboard Templates

Social Media Dashboards are a great way to showcase your social media efforts to your team or your clients. They are easy to follow and can track your most relevant metrics. Social Media Databox Templates include some very useful Dashboards that you might be interested in.

• LinkedIn Company pages Dashboard Template
• HubSpot (Social Media Tracking) Dashboard Template
• Instagram Business (account overview) Dashboard Template
• Facebook Pages & Facebook Ads: Engagement Summary Dashboard Template

And many more…

Connectors & Development Dashboard Templates

Connectors & Development Dashboard will help you have a better overview when it comes to how successful you and your team are at hitting sprint targets and responsiveness to user demands. There are several Connectors & Development Databox Templates to choose from.

• Bitbucket Dashboard Template
• GitHub Dashboard Template

Browse all software development dashboards here.

Paid Search Dashboard Templates

A Paid Search Dashboard is a great way to pull and visualize paid search data so that you can analyze trends and optimize performance. You have a great selection of Paid Search Databox Templates to choose from depending on the data you want to show. 

• AdSense Dashboard Template
• AdMob Dashboard Template
• Microsoft Advertising Overview Dashboard Template
• HubSpot + Google Ads Top of Funnel Dashboard Template

And many more…

Paid Social Dashboard Templates

Simply put, Paid Social Dashboard is best used to summarize ad engagement and conversion behavior driven by paid social platforms. Depending on the social platform you are using, there is a whole selection of Paid Social Databox Templates at your disposal. 

• Shopify + Fb + GA: Online Sales Dashboard Template
• Facebook Ads Purchase & Leads Breakdown Dashboard Template
• LinkedIn Ads: Ads Performance Dashboard Template
• Twitter Ads: Campaign Summary Dashboard Template

And many more…

Accounting & Payments Dashboard Templates

Accounting & Payments Dashboards are here to help visualize key accounting KPIs and provide a more comprehensive view of business performance. By doing so they are saving time, offering clarity, and improving your decision-making capabilities. You can check out some of the available Accounting & Payments Databox Templates to see whether they suit your business needs. 

• Stripe Dashboard Template
• Xero Dashboard Template
• Quickbooks: Profit and Loss Overview Dashboard Template
• ProfitWell (Churn Overview) Dashboard Template
• PayPal (Account Overview) Dashboard Template

And many more…

Browse all financial dashboards here.

Website Marketing & Sales Dashboard Templates

Website Marketing & Sales Dashboards help your team react better in real-time. They pull data from various locations and provide you key data that reveals product sales, customer engagement, and more. Depending on your team’s needs you can select from many Website Marketing & Sales Databox Templates.

• Intercom (account overview) Dashboard Template
• Drift Dashboard Template
• Blog Post Performance After SEO Update Dashboard Template
• Google My Business Insights Dashboard Template

And many more…

App Stores Dashboard Templates

An App Store Dashboard is here to enable you to gain insights into your sales trends and easily download data for your organization’s apps to analyze it more efficiently. Here are just some examples of App Stores Databox Templates:

• Play Store Metrics Dashboard Template

Browse all app store dashboards here.

Email Marketing Dashboard Templates

Your Email Dashboard should contain key metrics to demonstrate the performance and ROI of your email campaigns. There are several options to select from when it comes to Email Databox Templates.

• Seventh Sense- Overview Dashboard Template
• Mailchimp Dashboard Template 
• HubSpot Advanced Email Metrics Dashboard Template
• Email Marketing Performance Dashboard Template

And many more…

Browse all email marketing dashboards here.

Video Dashboard Templates

Your Video Dashboard should contain all the relevant metrics related to the performance of your videos. Some of the options offered are the following Video Databox Templates:

• Wistia Essentials – Getting Started with Video Dashboard Template
• YouTube Overview Dashboard Template
• Vimeo OTT (video overview) Dashboard Template

And many more…

Browse all video marketing dashboards here.

Database Dashboard Templates

The main purpose of a Database Dashboard is to combine the use of metrics and KPIs to produce a visually appealing design that is easily interpreted. Here are just some of the Database Databox Templates:

• MySQL Dashboard Template
• Microsoft SQL Server Dashboard Template

Browse all database dashboards here.

SEO & SEM Dashboard Templates

By using SEO & SEM Dashboards, you can easily track your efforts when it comes to SEO, Advertising Campaigns, Revenue, Goal Completions, Locations, Channel Groupings, and numerous other relevant data. SEO & SEM Databox Templates have a lot to offer when it comes to visualizing these particular data sets. 

• SEMrush (Keywords & Audits) Dashboard Template
• MOZ Basics Dashboard Template
• AccuRanker Domain Overview Dashboard Template
• Ahrefs: Project Overview Dashboard Template
• Google Analytics SEO Dashboard Template

And many more…

Editor’s note: Did you know that any Databox dashboard can be displayed on your smart TV? Broadcast your TV Dashboards for free now.

Automating Marketing Reports

Automating marketing reports can be very useful as it saves time and reduces human error. By implementing automated reporting, marketers can focus on strategy and analysis rather than the manual compilation of data.

Databox Resources on Automated Reporting:

• Learn how to set up an automated reporting system with tips, tools, and best practices: Read more.

• Explore how automated reporting has saved time and resources for 16 agencies: Case study.

• Discover how to automate your reporting process effectively with Databox: Learn more.

• Get a detailed guide on automating Google Analytics reports: Guide here.

• Find an overview of Databox’s reporting software and its capabilities: Overview.

Reporting On Output vs. Outcome Metrics in Your Marketing Meetings

Marketers tend to judge their performance based on their outputs, but it isn’t possible to have a full picture without calculating the outcomes. On the other hand, tracking only the outcomes means your team lacks visibility into the specific activities that actually drive those outcomes. Understanding business analysis better can be beneficial when it comes to improving your overall business performance.

 But, first, let’s understand the terminology a bit better – 

Outcomes represent what your business wants or needs to achieve. While outputs represent actions or items that contribute to achieving an outcome that you have set. 

Difference between Output and Outcome Metrics

Much like there is a clear difference between outcomes and outputs, there is a distinction between the metrics that we use to measure them. 

Output metrics

Output metrics measure your marketing activities. They are direct measurements of the work you’re doing on a daily or weekly basis. An additional benefit of output metrics is that they let you prioritize your daily activities by keeping you focused on things you can control right now. 

Outcome metrics

When it comes to outcomes metrics, they need to help you collect specific data to get insights into the extent to which expected outcomes, like changes in user behavior or knowledge, have been achieved. Simply put, they measure the impact of your outputs. 

There is a distinction between leading and lagging outcomes. Unlike with outputs where you can control your activities, outcomes often depend on people outside of your organization taking action. We don’t have control over outcomes, but some provide faster feedback than others.

A leading outcome would be a web traffic spike to your website after content sharing, while a lagging one is determining the success of a single blog post.

Finding the right Output and Outcome metrics

To truly determine the impact of your marketing efforts, it is important to look at both output and outcome metrics side by side. Sure, we can say that the ultimate outcome for a business is – growth, while the ultimate output goal is facilitating that growth. But how do we get there? We start by measuring outputs and outcomes.

Measuring outputs vs. outcomes

Measuring outputs is done by activity-based metrics that are easily quantifiable, for example:

• Number of emails sent during an email campaign
• Number of Events Managed in a month
• Number of tweets sent out a day

Measuring outcomes is not as direct, it depends on the desired outcome. By knowing the outcome you want to achieve, you are able to determine the activities that need to be completed and how integral each of these activities is to success. 

Setting goals

Having clear objectives that you want to achieve through your marketing efforts is essential for tracking marketing success. This is why setting goals is relevant to all marketers.  

What are Marketing Goals?

Marketing Goals are defined as a set of specific objectives you describe in your marketing plan. Goals vary depending on your marketing strategy, They can be tasks, quotas, improvements in KPIs, or various other standards based on which you have decided to measure your marketing success. That being said, it is important to note that marketers often opt for the SMART mnemonic when defining key goals. This helps present a far clearer picture of their intended outcome. So what does SMART stand for?

• Specific — Make sure your goals are defined as precisely as possible and set real numbers and real deadlines to hold yourself accountable.
• Measurable — goals that you set need to be both easily trackable and measurable.
• Attainable — Setting realistic goals is essential. Base your goals on the resources currently at your disposal when it comes to budget, team members, and time constraints. Don’t set them too low, you do want to experience growth in time. 
• Relevant — your chosen goals need to be closely related to your entire marketing plan, setting random goals is never helpful.
• Time-Bound — set clear deadlines for achieving your goals. Without set dates, your goals will end up being nothing more than wishful thinking. 

How to Position your Goals to:

• Teammates – setting goals for a team requires you to find a balance between maximizing the individual skill sets of each team member and finding the best way to achieve the desired outcome. Set weekly Marketing Reports for your team so that you can see where you are when it comes to hitting your pre-set targets for each time period.

• Clients – Present your clients with realistic goals and make sure you keep them up to speed with all the development via well-composed Marketing Reports. 

• Management – Presenting goals to Management is best done on a monthly and annual level. You need to keep them informed on your progress and any possible problems. The Marketing Reports need to be clear and concise.

Output goals

An output goal is simply defined by your desired output amount. You set output goals based on your outcome desires and track them through chosen output metrics. 

Outcome goals

Outcome goals are the ones that define which output metrics you are to track. Outcome goals are harder to obtain and they specify a result. So we can treat retention and/or increase revenue as marketing goals, outcome goals need to sound more like – retain 80 percent of our tier one customers resulting in X dollars revenue.

White Label Marketing Reporting

In general, white-label solutions allow companies to rebrand, developed by other companies, then sell them as their own. In this case, we are talking about Marketing Reports. 

What are white-labeled reports?

White Labeled Marketing Reports are reports that let you add your own branding to a report Dashboard created by Databox so that you can present it to your clients. 

Why is white-labeling important? 

White Labeling of Making Reports helps your agency’s branding efforts. Even if you use an external tool to create your reports. Having the option of branding them as your own has a great positive effect on how your clients perceive your company and are great for brand reinforcement.

Most important white-labeling features

When creating your White-Labeled Marketing Reports, it is essential that you ensure that they have the following features:

1. Logo

Incorporating your company’s logo on a Marketing Report is a must. The best location is toward the top of each report in the upper left or right corner. The same location works for Dashboards You can use a watermark in place of the logo as well. To save space and make it more impactful, don’t include your tagline or slogan.

2. Header/Footer

Using the header or footer as additional branding opportunities on your Marketing Reports is a great idea. You can include some of the following information in them – general contact information for your agency, your physical address, main phone number, email address, and website address. Having a white label solution that supports custom headers and footers is a great plus.

3. Colors

Make sure that the colors you choose to match your brand’s. But at the same time that they don’t diminish the visibility of the data presented. 

4. Dashboard Domain

Keep in mind that in case your company provides clients with a unique login to view their white-label reports or dashboard online, branding the Dashboard domain is a huge plus. This will make things a lot easier for your clients as all they need to do is visit a subdomain of your agency website to log in.

5. Email Domain

Since you are the one delivering the report to your clients, in most cases, this is done via email. It is important for better branding of your business that you send the report from an agency-branded account with a professional domain email and not a solution-branded account. There is no need for your clients to know which Marketing Reporting tool you are using. 

Stay on Top of Your Marketing Reporting Game

To finish off, we want to provide you with some useful advice on how you can always stay on top of your marketing game. In order not to miss a beat and ensure success one must keep a close eye on each and every part of their marketing process. 

Use Project Management Tools

If you decide not to use project management tools, there is a good chance that you’re wasting a lot of time on the little things and doing more work than necessary. Keeping track of who’s working on what is not easy, and dropping the ball will lead to an inefficient collaboration among team members and teams and spread across email threads and chat software. This usually results in missed deadlines and dissatisfied clients.

Using project management tools make all the above-mentioned problems go away. You get to run a soothe marketing operation with everyone knowing what their tasks are and how they are contributing. Not to mention that it helps define a clear timeline and meet even the strictest of deadlines. 

Set up Notifications/Alerts

You don’t have to check daily when which task is due. By setting up notifications and alerts from anything from team meetings to posting content, you will stay on track and not have delays.

Editor’s note: Did you know that you can get KPI performance alerts right in Slack? Connect your data and start receiving performance insights directly in Slack now.

Organize Marketing Meetings

Weekly marketing team meetings are a great way to inform everyone what is the current state of affairs. You can share RMarketing reports and metrics to demonstrate how far your team is from reaching the set goals and exchange thoughts and ideas. Communication within a team and between different teams is essential for running a successful marketing department. 

Ready to Build a Free Marketing Report in Databox?

Chances are, you’re tracking a bunch of marketing metrics across a bunch of different tools.

You can visualize those metrics, alongside metrics from other tools you’re using, in one place with Databox.

More importantly, our marketing dashboard software is free. Just create your free account here, connect your data, and build your first marketing report in minutes.

The post Marketing Reporting: The KPIs, Reports, & Dashboard Templates You Need to Get Started appeared first on Databox.

Of course, you can view these metrics on dashboards and get updates through automated reports. But sometimes you need to take a closer look at a specific metric to understand historical performance, get more context, and get insights that help you improve it. To help provide these insights, we’re rolling out our all-new Metric Insights.

With Metric Insights, you can now access all the information about a specific metric from one screen – Goals, Benchmarks, Forecasts, and more. And use it to monitor your performance, track emerging trends or patterns in your data, set more realistic goals for core KPIs, and ultimately achieve better results.

All Features

Metric Insights allows you to drill down and explore your metric and get more context for it. From one screen, you’ll be able to:

• Analyze your metric’s performance over time using an interactive visualization. And easily switch between chart types to select the view that best suits your needs.
• Receive automated updates on your metric’s performance, so you always have the latest information.
• Track goals associated with your metric and monitor your progress towards achieving them.
• Compare your metric’s performance against general benchmarks to identify areas for improvement.
• Make more informed decisions about your strategies using the forecasted value.

How To Access the Metric Insights Page For Your Saved Metrics

There are a few ways to access Metric Insights: through the metric sub-menu, a metric tooltip, or the My Metrics page. The quickest way is via My Metrics.

Simply navigate to the Metrics icon in the left-hand sidebar, hover over any saved metric, and click on the View details button. This will redirect you to the Metric Insights page.

The Metric Insights page can be divided into four sections: Visualization, Metric Comparison, Performance Summaries sidebar, and Goals.

Visualization: Visualize your metric’s performance.

At the top of the Metric Insights page, you’ll find an automatically generated visualization, showcasing your metric’s performance over time. You can customize this view by:

• Adjusting the date range to see how your metric performed during specific periods of interest.
• Including one or more dimensions to your graph, providing a more detailed and nuanced view of your metric’s performance.

And, you’re not limited to just one visualization type! With the click of a button, you can switch between a line chart, bar chart, table, and more, to explore the different ways you can visualize your metric’s performance.

Metric Comparison: Compare your metric to Forecasts, Benchmarks, and more.

Below your chart, you’ll find the Metric Snapshot – featuring three key data points about your metric:

• Compare period: Compare your metric’s current performance to a specific time in the past. Depending on your plan, you’ll be able to compare it to 1 year ago or 6 months ago.
• Forecasted value: See where your current metric performance is leading you.
• Benchmark value: Learn how well you’re doing compared to established standards.

Performance Summaries Sidebar: Get personalized, actionable insights about your metric.

In the Performance Summaries sidebar, you’ll find a short yet detailed summary of your metrics performance. So the next time you’re asked questions like “How is this metric doing?” or “What can we do to improve results?”, you’ll know the answers right away.

In the sidebar, you’ll find:

• Metric Description: View a brief description of your metric to help you better interpret your results.
• Performance Insights: Quickly spot key changes in your metric’s performance. See the highest value achieved, the lowest value recorded, the overall average value within the chosen timeframe, and more.
• Data Summary: Read a concise summary of your metric’s performance to help you quickly understand where you’re at.
• Recommendations: View up to 10 recommendations that will help you improve your metric’s performance.

Goals: Track progress towards your goals.

If you’ve set a goal for your metric, the Goals section will help simplify progress tracking. Quickly see how close you are to reaching your target so you can stay focused and motivated.

Learn More About Your Saved Metrics Today

From visualizing trends to tracking progress towards goals, Metric Insights acts as your central hub for all things metric performance. Gain a deeper understanding of your KPIs and make informed decisions that drive successful results.

Ready to get started? Simply, log in to your Databox account and navigate to Metrics.

If you’re new to Databox, getting started is easy. Create a free account and effortlessly connect to 100+ integrations, build custom dashboards, schedule reports, and more – in just a few clicks.

The post New in Databox: Analyze the Performance of Any Metric or KPI with Metric Insights appeared first on Databox.

However, in situations where you need to quickly pull up a specific KPI or metric, spreadsheets simply won’t cut it. In the sea of raw data, finding the one metric you are interested in can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack, which is where a Google Sheets dashboard becomes essential.

To resolve this issue, we use Google sheets dashboards.  At Databox, we have experts for visualizing dashboards inside or from Google Sheets, as this is one of the main focus points our product solves. Our team ensures that users can seamlessly turn raw data into comprehensive dashboards, providing clear insights at a glance.

Google sheets dashboards are used for storing data in a visual format, which allows you to have a birds-eye overview of your most important metrics.

Dashboards are extremely engaging and they allow your employees, coworkers, and key stakeholders to quickly go over any type of information in a timely manner. 

In this report, we are going to explain exactly what Google sheets dashboards are, how you can create them, and provide you with some free templates that you can incorporate into your own company.

• What is a Google Sheets Dashboard?
• Google Sheets Dashboard Tutorial: Create a Comprehensive Google Dashboard in 3 Easy Steps
• How to Build a Dynamic Dashboard In Google Sheets
• Prebuilt Google Sheets Dashboard Templates
• How to Create a Google Sheets Dashboard in Databox
• Google Sheets Dashboard Examples
• Let Databox Build You a Free Google Sheets Dashboard

Benefits of Using Google Sheets for Dashboards

Google Sheets dashboards offer several key advantages:

• Cost-effective solution compared to other software, as Google Sheets is free
• Ability to display key metrics, KPIs, and important spreadsheet elements in a visually appealing format
• Customizable with various chart types like pie charts, column charts, line charts, and more
• Real-time data updates for interactive and up-to-date reporting
• Integration with the entire Google Workspace ecosystem
• Easy sharing and collaboration features for teams and stakeholders

What is a Google Sheets Dashboard?

Google sheets dashboards are one of the best ways to acquire a clear overview of your company’s key metrics and KPIs since they turn dry data into understandable visuals.

With the use of graphs, charts, and tables, your readers will have an easier time comprehending the important information and use it to make better data-driven decisions.

Plus, if you put a bit more work into the visuals, you can make the dashboard look both beautiful and professional, and impress your audience with a unique aesthetic.

This isn’t really the case with spreadsheets though, as they quickly become an ‘eye sore’ and you won’t be able to extract important data in a timely manner when it matters the most.

Furthermore, a dashboard in Google sheets can focus on different things. There are project dashboards, company-wide dashboards, team-specific dashboards (Marketing, Sales, HR, etc.), executive dashboards, and plenty more.

Nowadays, using a data dashboard has become pretty much standard practice among companies. Team leaders will use them to showcase their performance to an audience by emitting them on an office TV screen.

This results in better-motivated teams, helps keep everyone in the loop, allows high-ranking members to make quick decisions, and makes identifying problematic areas a whole lot easier.

Related: How to Create a KPI Report in Google Sheets? Step-by-Step Guide

Common Challenges When Creating Dashboards in Google Sheets

While Google Sheets offers many benefits for creating dashboards, there are some common challenges to be aware of:

Performance Issues with Large Datasets: Google Sheets can slow down significantly when dealing with large amounts of data, impacting the dashboard’s responsiveness and update speed.
Limited Customization Options: Compared to specialized BI tools, Google Sheets has limitations in terms of advanced customization and design options for dashboards.

Our 3-Step Google Sheets Dashboard Tutorial: How to Create a Dashboard in Google Sheets

Now that you know what a Google sheets basic dashboard is and how important it can be, you are probably feeling tempted to try it out.

If that’s the case, here are the three easy steps you should follow when creating a dashboard in Google sheets.

Let’s dive in and learn how to create your first dashboard in google sheets.

• Step 1: Importing or Gathering Data
• Step 2: Parsing Data (Using Formulas)
• Step 3: Visualizing Data

Step 1: Importing or Gathering Data

The first thing you will have to do is make sure that you have enough raw data in your Google sheet before you start building a dashboard.

There are a few different ways you can import data into your sheet, so let’s go through them one by one.

Using IMPORT Functions

In case the data you want to import is already accessible, you can use Google sheets’ IMPORT functions to get the job done.

Depending on your format, here are some of the most-used functions:

• IMPORTDATA – Used for importing csv and tsv formatted data.
• IMPORTRANGE – Used for importing data within a specific range of cells.
• IMPORTFEED – Used for importing ATOM and RSS feed data
• IMPORTXML – Used for importing several data types (TSV, CSV, XML, HTML, RSS, ATOM, etc.). This function is essentially a combination of IMPORTDATA, IMPORTFEED, and IMPORTHTML.
• IMPORTHTML – Used for importing data that is located on a specific HTML page.

For this method to work, the data you want to import will have to be publicly available beforehand.

Related: 40 Advanced Google Sheets Tips for Marketing Pros

Using Google Forms

Google Forms can be very useful in case you need to import an abundance of data to your spreadsheet. By using the IMPORTRANGE function we mentioned above, you will be able to quickly transfer the data from Google Forms to Google Sheets.

Also, if you use the QUERY function in addition to IMPORTRANGE, you can filter out the most important data before it makes its way onto the dashboard.

In case you don’t have Google Form and are creating a new one, we recommend that you connect it to a spreadsheet so data can be stored separately and you don’t risk losing it.

Using an External Source via an Add On

While this method does have its advantages, it requires quite a bit of technical knowledge in order to be applied.

You can search for API connector add-ons in the Google Workspace Marketplace and import the data to your Google sheet by using the API.

Although, if the developer ever decides to update the add-on, that might disrupt your dashboard’s functionality. This can be a huge setback since you would have to start building it again from scratch.

Related: 13 Ideas on How to Use Google Sheets In Your Business

Step 2: Parsing Data (Using Formulas)

Okay, so now you have all your data gathered in the spreadsheet and it’s time to move on to the next step – organizing it.

The current state of your dashboard is probably a combination of messy numbers and confusing data. Don’t worry, you will be able to transform that into meaningful insights in no time.

While this step might be a bit more complex than the previous one, you don’t need to be an experienced programmer to get the hang of it – you just have to pay attention to how the formulas work.

Here are the functions that you will need:

• AVERAGE – Used for finding the average value of data in a certain column.
• COUNTIF – This function calculates how many times a specific criterion appeared in an individual column.
• COUNTIFS – Works the same as the COUNTIF function, but only counts the data if it fulfilled a specific condition.
• SUM – Used for summing up all the data in a specific column.
• SUMIF – Works the same as SUM, but only sums up the data if it fulfilled a specific condition.
• SUMIFS – Works the same as SUMIF, but there are multiple different conditions.
• SORT – Used for organizing a specific range of data by a descending or ascending order.
• UNIQUE – Used for recognizing unique values in data sets.

Step 3: Visualizing Data

The final step to create a dashboard in Google Sheets is to visualize the data in your Google sheets dashboard.

This involves adding different elements such as sparklines, tables, charts, graphs, etc.

Here are some of the best features to visualize your data and make it aesthetically pleasing for the readers.

Pivot Table

The Pivot Table feature allows you to organize a large spreadsheet by only using the available data. For example, you can organize data through subcategories like name, date, price, or any other helpful identifiers.

You can create a pivot table by following these steps:

• Select the cells that you want to turn into a table, click on ‘Insert’ in the heading bar, and then press ‘Pivot Table’.
• You will see a pop-up window appear. In it, you can choose the exact data range and select whether you want the pivot table to appear in the existing sheet or a new one.
• The new pivot table should now appear. Also, there will be a sidebar through which you can customize the different elements in the table.

Slicer

To organize your spreadsheet, you can use the Slicer feature.

Slicer, as the name suggests, slices your spreadsheet into separate parts so only the crucial data is showcased. It’s a great way to manipulate what your spreadsheet is displaying.

Here are a few steps you can follow to use Slicer:

• Select Data in your heading bar and click ‘Add a Slicer’.
• Choose a specific data range.
• The slicer will come with a sidebar on the right side. You can use the sidebar to alter the parameters and filter the data by condition/value.
• After you finish customizing the parameters, just go back to the original slicer feature. The data should now be ‘sliced’ and separated from the raw data.

Charts

Charts are one of the best visualization features to transform your data into meaningful insights.

Also, charts are great for accurately representing information since you will be able to easily draw out important patterns.

Follow these steps to incorporate charts into your Google spreadsheet:

• Press ‘Insert’ and then click on ‘Chart’ in the main heading bar.
• A blank chart will appear and you will see a sidebar next to it. In the sidebar, you will have different options for customization.
• Select your ‘Data Range’ in the sidebar and use ‘Chart Type’ to choose a type that fits your spreadsheet.
• Lastly, to alter the parameters of the chart, you should go to the ‘Customize’ tab in the editor.

Sparkline

While charts can be immensely useful when presenting important metrics, they aren’t exactly the best fit for spreadsheets. This is because they take up too much space and cover up cells that include crucial information.

For this reason, you might want to choose Sparkline as an alternative.

Sparkline solves the issue since it essentially adds a chart into one individual cell. It is most commonly used for showcasing how the numbers are progressing (seasonal increases/decreases, economic cycles, etc.).

You can either choose a line chart, column chart, bar chart, or win-loss chart.

Adding a Sparkline is pretty simple, all you have to do is type in this formula: =SPARKLINE(data, [options]).

How to Build a Dynamic Dashboard In Google Sheets

Dynamic dashboards are advanced dashboards in which data automatically updates in real-time, as soon as any changes occur.

They are also known as interactive Google sheets dashboards because you can alter and reorganize the reports rather quickly.

In essence, dynamic dashboards are the same as static dashboards, except they have ‘superpowers’. A static dashboard only showcases a fixed set of metrics and data, while dynamic dashboards update them in real-time.

Creating a dynamic dashboard in Google sheets is also a bit more complicated than creating a normal dashboard.

You will have to organize the data differently, learn additional functions, create new data tabs, and use other methods (e.g. Data validation).

Prebuilt Google Sheets Dashboard Templates

If you think that making a dashboard in Google Sheets, especially for your marketing reports or KPI tracking, is going to take away too much of your time, you might be interested in checking out a free Google sheets dashboard template.

Templates can be a great starting point since they will already have a set foundation on what your KPI dashboard or general dashboard will look like.

They can be a great alternative if you’re running short on time and can’t afford to create one from scratch.

There are a few great dashboard template options in Google Sheets, and you can find them on the main screen. You can find options on anything from a Google sheets annual budget report to an executive report and similar templates.

To find these templates, simply go to ‘File’ and then click on ‘Make a Copy’.

How to Create a Google Sheets Dashboard in Databox

With project management tools revolutionizing the way in which spreadsheets and dashboards are created, there aren’t many advantages to utilizing Google Sheets anymore.

Limited automation, integration, and not enough comprehensiveness are just some of the issues that users are having with Google sheets.

Databox can be the answer to these issues. 

Aside from having a bunch of new useful features, Databox also makes the process much less time-consuming.

When creating a dashboard in Google sheets, you might end up spending hours getting the hang of the different functions and utilizing the visualization tools. With Databox, this process lasts literally minutes.

Don’t believe us? Check out this three-step guide to see how easy it is.

• Step 1: Connect Google Sheets
• Step 2: Create custom metrics
• Step 3: Add custom metrics to your databoard

Step 1: Connect Google Sheets

Navigate to Databoards, click + New Databoard > Use Wizard, and select the ‘Google Sheets’ source from the list.

Next, choose the specific Sheet you want to pull data from and press Select file. 

Once you have selected your preferred sheet, the data will appear on your screen with each column defined. Now it’s time to begin creating a custom metric.

Step 2: Create custom metrics

Once you connect the raw data from your Google sheets data, it’s time to create a custom metric.

To make the Google sheet integration even better, Databox uses the Metric Builder tool which provides a smooth visualization experience.

It simplifies the visualization process since everything you want to do will only be a few clicks away, and you won’t have to spend time learning query language or how to write lines of code.

Follow the wizard to select the Metric, Dimension (optional), and Date columns.

Then, name your Custom Metric and choose the appropriate Aggregation Function and Data Type.

Save the Custom Metric, making it available in the Datablock Library.

Step 3: Add custom metrics to your databoard

Open the Databoard in the Databox Designer or create a new one.

Then, use the Metric Library to drag and drop desired Datablocks onto your Databoard.

And that’s it!

PRO TIP: Need Help Pulling All of Your Spreadsheet Data in One Place?

Not sure which metrics to track or dashboards to build from your spreadsheet data? Have old reports you want to recreate in Databox? Share your dashboard needs with one of Databox’s product experts and we’ll build you a customized Google Sheets dashboard for free.

Here is an example of what your dashboard can look like (just imagine your data populating here)…

Whether you’ve exported data into a spreadsheet, entered data manually into one, or have a more complex database setup, Databox can be used to create an easy-to-read and easy-to-share visualization of your unique data.

Learn more about our free Google Sheets Dashboard setup here, reach out for assistance via email or chat, or get started immediately by following the steps below:

• Step 1: Sign up for a free Databox account
• Step 2: Connect your data with Databox
• Step 3: Share your dashboards wishlist with our team via chat
• Step 4: Receive your dashboard in 24 hours

REQUEST MY FREE DASHBOARD

Google Sheets Dashboard Examples

In case you are dealing with a handful of important metrics and KPIs, the templates from Google sheets may not be enough to cover everything you need.

If that’s so, you might be interested in checking out these Databox dashboard examples. We can build any of these for you for free.

• Financial Health Dashboard Example
• Sales Overview Dashboard Example
• HR (Employee Performance) Dashboard Example

Financial Health Dashboard Example

The Financial Health Report Example helps you understand your numbers much more clearly, which later results in better financial decisions.

The questions this dashboard can answer are:

• How much is the revenue growth?
• Am I doing well with customer acquisition?
• How much does the customer acquisition cost?
• How much are the general and administrative costs?

Once you know the answers to these, staying on top of your company’s finances will be a piece of cake.

What’s more, the financial metrics, including those from a budget dashboard, can be transferred to a Google spreadsheet where you can then connect data from the other business systems your company incorporates.

Get your free Google Sheets dashboard template by contacting us via chat!

Sales Summary Dashboard Example

To keep track and monitor data from your company’s different sectors (marketing, HR, sales, accounting, etc.) or to effectively manage specific projects, you can use a project dashboard or a sales dashboard example.

While you probably already have team leaders in charge of meeting the quotas, you will want to be informed of all the latest changes as soon as they occur.

However, building a dashboard for each individual department is simply too time-consuming.

This is where the comprehensiveness of the summary dashboard comes in handy, you will gain an overview of all the key metrics from each department in one place.

Additionally, by visualizing these dashboard KPIs, you will make the performance metrics much more understandable to the key stakeholders in your company.

Get your free Google Sheets dashboard template by contacting us via chat!

SMB Employee Engagement Performance Dashboard Example

No matter how reliable your employees may be, you should still track their progress towards achieving the overall business objectives.

The best way to do this is through the HR dashboard example. 

This comprehensive dashboard provides you with valuable insights into what exactly is going on among the ranks and you can use it to capture all the important employee engagement data in one place.

Not only that, but you can also use it as a place to track employee sentiment and identify the biggest issues that need to be quickly resolved.

Once you acquire all of this data, you and the other team leaders can use it to make better data-based decisions and create finer employee engagement plans for the following period.

Get your free Google Sheets dashboard template by contacting us via chat!

Let Databox Build You a Free Google Sheets Dashboard

Building a dashboard in Google sheets might seem easy at first, but once you roll up your sleeves and start the work, it turns out to be a much more grueling process than you anticipated.

You have to pile up a ton of raw data to begin the process, filter out the exact metrics that you want to track, figure out how the various functions and formulas work, and then learn how to visualize the data through charts and graphs.

This can end up taking a huge amount of time, something that busy executives generally lack.

So why go through all this hassle if you don’t have to?

With Databox, you can sit back and enjoy while our team does the heavy lifting.

All you have to do is connect with someone from our team and explain which data you want to include in the dashboard. We’ll do the rest.

We can set up your first dashboard in less than 24 hours and highlight some of the key functions that our customers usually use for performance analysis.

In case you aren’t sure which metrics should be included in the dashboard, don’t worry, we can also help you determine these KPIs based on your company’s overall goals.

Don’t have time to prepare a dashboard for your next meeting? Sign up for our free dashboard setup and leave a lasting impression on your key stakeholders.

The post How to Create a Dashboard in Google Sheets in 3 Easy Steps appeared first on Databox.

In today’s data-driven world, the success of any digital advertising campaign hinges on the ability to measure, analyze, and optimize performance.

It’s no longer enough to simply launch an ad and hope for the best – the key to staying competitive in this dynamic environment is benchmarking.

Digital advertising benchmarks offer valuable insights into what constitutes a successful campaign within specific industries, shedding light on key performance indicators, such as click-through rates, conversion rates, and ROI.

They point advertisers in the right direction, helping them set realistic goals, refine strategies, and ultimately achieve optimal results.

In this report, we examined digital advertising metrics such as clicks, CTR, CPC, spend, and more, across all the biggest advertising platforms like Google Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and Microsoft Ads.

For more insight into other benchmarks, you can join our Benchmark Groups for free and get instant access to a variety of cohorts you can analyze.

Let’s get started:

• Google Ads Cost
• Google Ads Clicks
• Google Ads CTR
• Google Ads CPC
• Google Ads Conversions
• Facebook Amount Spent
• Facebook Clicks
• Facebook CTR
• Facebook CPC
• Facebook Purchases
• LinkedIn Spent
• LinkedIn Clicks
• LinkedIn CTR
• LinkedIn CPC
• LinkedIn Conversions
• Microsoft Advertising Spend
• Microsoft Advertising Clicks
• Microsoft Advertising CTR
• Microsoft Advertising CPC
• Microsoft Advertising Conversions
• Resources: Digital Advertising Benchmark Groups for All Industries

Google Ads Cost

Across all industries, the median cost of Google Ads for September 2023 was $1,749.78.

Let’s take a closer look at the Google Ads cost across different industries:

Apparel & Footwear and e-commerce & Marketplaces have a significantly higher cost than the median across all companies. This could be due to higher competition and customer engagement in online shopping.

Expert recommendation: Don’t allow a good campaign to go to waste by ignoring the dayparting feature in Google Ads. This feature allows you to schedule your ads to show up at a set time when you expect the ad to generate the most clicks and engagement from your target audience. This is especially important if you find that there are peak shopping hours or high online activity during a specific part of the day for your audience.

Google Ads Clicks

Across all industries, the median number of clicks on Google Ads for September 2023 was $1.18K.

Let’s take a closer look at the Google Ads clicks across different industries:

Again, the Apparel and Footwear industry records the highest number of clicks in Google Ads. One of the potential reasons is that Apparel and footwear are products with consistently high consumer demand. Many people regularly shop for clothing and shoes, making these industries particularly attractive for advertisers.

Plus, shoppers are usually in a high-intent buying state when they are searching for these items, making it easier to attract them to the product landing page.

Expert recommendation: Before picking a keyword to bid on, thoroughly analyze organizational and market data trends beforehand. When it comes to both your organization and what the competition is doing, there shouldn’t be any stone left unturned. For example, if you find a potentially lucrative keyword to bid on, but you’re the only one doing it, there might be a reason why your competition has chosen to ignore it.

Google Ads CTR

Across all industries, the median Google Ads CTR for September 2023 was 4.84%.

Let’s take a closer look at the Google Ads CTR across different industries:

Travel and Leisure dominate the CTR game. This could be because people often actively seek information on travel destinations, accommodations, and leisure activities, which can lead to higher CTRs when they encounter relevant ads.

Moreover, the travel industry often experiences peak seasons when people plan and book trips, resulting in higher CTRs during these periods. Since our data is from September 2023, this could very well be the case due to summer vacations and holiday travel.

Expert recommendation: How intriguing is your headline? While you might think that the answer is “very,” oftentimes, business owners overestimate their headline copy, which is one of the most important elements in driving your CTR. To improve your ad headline and generate more clicks, you can focus on the old copywriting rule of 4Us – is it useful, urgent, unique, and ultra-specific? Your headline should check at least two of these boxes.

Google Ads CPC

Across all industries, the median Google Ads CPC for September 2023 was $1.35.

Let’s take a closer look at the Google Ads CPC across different industries:

The Healthcare industry records the highest CPC, and it can be due to its highly competitive nature, with many medical practices, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and healthcare providers fighting for the same audience and keywords.

This increased competition drives up the cost of advertising, as businesses are willing to pay more to secure prominent ad placements.

Expert recommendation: If your keywords are on the mark and you’re getting a good number of clicks to your website – but still face a high CPC – consider testing a few more landing page variations. Make sure your landing page creates a seamless user experience, is relevant and trustworthy, the messaging matches the ad, and the information is easily digestible.

Google Ads Conversions

Across all industries, the median number of conversions on Google Ads for September 2023 was 54.

Let’s take a closer look at the Google Ads conversions across different industries:

E-commerce and Marketplace have by far the highest conversion rates. One reason for this is that users who are searching for these products are high-intent and are often looking to make a purchase, which makes them more likely to convert.

Plus, due to huge competition, e-commerce businesses often target highly specific keywords related to their products. These long-tail keywords can attract users who are further along in the buying process and have a clearer idea of what they want.

E-commerce companies can also take advantage of seasonal trends and promotions to increase conversions. For example, holiday sales, Black Friday, and other special occasions can drive a surge in purchase behavior.

Expert recommendation: Give your campaigns enough time to breathe. What we mean by this is, that even though constant testing is crucial for performance optimization, make sure you’re not rushing it. Let your campaign run for a reasonable time before you decide to switch up the elements and start changing things.

Instantly and Anonymously Benchmark Your Company’s Performance Against Others Just Like You

If you ever asked yourself:

• How does our marketing stack up against our competitors?
• Are our salespeople as productive as reps from similar companies?
• Are our profit margins as high as our peers?

Databox Benchmark Groups can finally help you answer these questions and discover how your company measures up against similar companies based on your KPIs.

When you join Benchmark Groups, you will:

• Get instant, up-to-date data on how your company stacks up against similar companies based on the metrics most important to you. Explore benchmarks for dozens of metrics, built on anonymized data from thousands of companies and get a full 360° view of your company’s KPIs across sales, marketing, finance, and more.
• Understand where your business excels and where you may be falling behind so you can shift to what will make the biggest impact. Leverage industry insights to set more effective, competitive business strategies. Explore where exactly you have room for growth within your business based on objective market data.
• Keep your clients happy by using data to back up your expertise. Show your clients where you’re helping them overperform against similar companies. Use the data to show prospects where they really are… and the potential of where they could be.
• Get a valuable asset for improving yearly and quarterly planning. Get valuable insights into areas that need more work. Gain more context for strategic planning.

The best part?

• Benchmark Groups are free to access.
• The data is 100% anonymized. No other company will be able to see your performance, and you won’t be able to see the performance of individual companies either.

When it comes to showing you how your performance compares to others, here is what it might look like for the metric Average Session Duration:

And here is an example of an open group you could join:

And this is just a fraction of what you’ll get. With Databox Benchmarks, you will need only one spot to see how all of your teams stack up — marketing, sales, customer service, product development, finance, and more. 

• Choose criteria so that the Benchmark is calculated using only companies like yours
• Narrow the benchmark sample using criteria that describe your company
• Display benchmarks right on your Databox dashboards

Sounds like something you want to try out? Join a Databox Benchmark Group today!

START BENCHMARKING

Facebook Amount Spent

Across all industries, the median amount spent on Facebook Ads for September 2023 was $1,496.75.

Let’s take a closer look at the Facebook Ads amount spent across different industries:

Apparel & Footwear, E-commerce & Marketplaces, and Food have substantially higher amounts spent compared to other industries we examined.

These results could be due to their universal appeal, broad audiences, and ongoing offers/deals.

Expert recommendation: To make the most out of your Facebook Ads amount spent, make sure you diversify your campaigns properly. In other words, you should have different campaigns ready for acquisition, retargeting, etc. This way, you’re making more targeted actions, which can be of huge help if you’re on a tighter advertising budget.

Facebook Clicks

Across all industries, the median number of clicks on Facebook Ads for September 2023 was 3.03K.

Let’s take a closer look at the Facebook Ads clicks across different industries:

A potential reason for Apparel and footwear having the highest number of clicks is the highly visual products, which positively affect user experience. The ability to showcase images and videos of clothing and shoes can be compelling and engaging for users.

Many Apparel & Footwear brands also collaborate with influencers and celebrities to promote their products, which can lead to increased engagement on sponsored posts.

Expert recommendation: If you want a clean, understandable overview of what’s going on with your Facebook Ads campaigns (including all relevant metrics from clicks to CPC), you can download our free Facebook Ads Campaign Performance dashboard. Instead of juggling through the not-so-intuitive Facebook Ads Manager interface and tracking your data, you can connect your most relevant metrics in one place and track them in real-time. This way, you’ll quickly be able to spot any burning issues and optimize underperforming elements.

Facebook CTR

Across all industries, the median CTR on Facebook Ads for September 2023 was 1.44%.

Let’s take a closer look at the Facebook Ads CTR across different industries:

The reason for the Travel & Leisure industry’s high CTR in September is that the travel industry often runs promotions and offers based on seasonality, holidays, or special events.

Limited-time offers and discounts can create a sense of urgency, prompting users to click on ads to take advantage of these deals as the summer holidays are coming to an end.

Expert recommendation: Make sure you sprinkle enough social proof in your Facebook ad to get the user further down your funnel. Nowadays, with so many claims being thrown around in the digital advertising space, being credible and leveraging social proof can put you a few steps ahead of your competition and show your users that your offer is reliable. Then, add more examples of satisfied client testimonials on your landing page to finish off the job.

Facebook CPC

Across all industries, the median CPC on Facebook Ads for September 2023 was $0.49.

Let’s take a closer look at the Facebook Ads CPC across different industries:

The Health & Wellness industry has the highest CPC, and it could be because it’s highly competitive, with many brands vying for the same audience. As a result, the bidding for ad placements becomes intense, driving up the CPC as advertisers are willing to pay more to reach potential customers.

Expert recommendation: One potential way to reduce your CPC is to stop selling your product via the ad – that’s what the sales page should do. Instead, you should focus on selling the click that leads the user down to the sales page. Build enough curiosity and intrigue that the user can’t help but check out what you have in store for them in the next part of your funnel.

Facebook Purchases

Across all industries, the median number of purchases on Facebook Ads for September 2023 was 24.

Let’s take a closer look at the Facebook Ads number of purchases across different industries:

The Apparel & Footwear industry dominates this metric as well, and it can be due to seasonal trends and promotions that are more common during months like September.

This can drive higher purchase intent, and advertisers can take advantage of these trends to create timely and relevant campaigns.

Expert recommendation: Purchases usually aren’t made on the first impression and this is why remarketing is so crucial in Facebook advertising. Just make sure you set up your remarketing parameters properly – for example, targeting people who have watched 75% of your VSL or have clicked on your ad to go to the landing page.

LinkedIn Spent

Across all industries, the median LinkedIn Ads spent for September 2023 was $1,335.48.

Let’s take a closer look at LinkedIn Ads spent across different industries:

Healthcare and Informational Technology and Services spend the most amount of money on LinkedIn Ads, and the reason for that can be that LinkedIn it is particularly well-suited for reaching a B2B audience. Both the Healthcare and Information Technology & Services industries often have specialized and professional target audiences, including healthcare professionals, IT decision-makers, and other professionals.

These industries also tend to deal with high-value customers. Healthcare services can be expensive, and IT solutions in the technology sector often involve significant investments, which makes bigger spending understandable.

Expert recommendation: To make the most out of your ad spent, make sure your LinkedIn company page is properly optimized. The best advice here is to treat your company page like a standalone landing page. Include all the relevant elements, from your unique value proposition to social proof. These are the things your customers will be paying attention to the most when you start advertising on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn Clicks

Across all industries, the median number of clicks on LinkedIn Ads for September 2023 was 379.

Let’s take a closer look at LinkedIn Ads clicks across different industries:

With many SaaS companies operating in the B2B space, it’s not that surprising that this industry records the highest number of clicks.

LinkedIn is known for its B2B marketing capabilities, allowing SaaS companies to reach the right businesses and professionals with their ads and get them to click through to the next page.

Expert recommendation: One great way to get more clicks on your LinkedIn ad is to optimize your messaging strategies based on your prospect’s stage of awareness. You’ll need to test and refine this as you go, based on the results you’re seeing for different stages. If your prospects are in the problem-aware stage, you’ll need different messaging than if they were in the product-aware stage.

LinkedIn CTR

Across all industries, the median CTR on LinkedIn Ads for September 2023 was 0.78%.

Let’s take a closer look at the LinkedIn Ads CTR across different industries:

The Industrial and Manufacturing sector is also often B2B-centric, which could explain the highest CTR recorded in our Benchmark Groups data. The ads in this industry may resonate more with LinkedIn users looking for industry-specific solutions or partnerships.

Expert recommendation: No matter if you’re running video ads, text ads, or image ads on LinkedIn, you need to improve your hook in order to maximize your CTR. The last thing you want is that when a user looks at your ad and thinks, “Oh, I’ve seen this before, nothing new.” Follow some of the copywriting best practices and create a proper pattern-interrupt that persuades prospects to learn more about your offer.

LinkedIn CPC

Across all industries, the median CPC on LinkedIn Ads for September 2023 was $2.87.

Let’s take a closer look at the LinkedIn Ads CPC across different industries:

Healthcare has by far the highest CPC on LinkedIn. Healthcare professionals and decision-makers, such as doctors, nurses, and hospital administrators, are a sought-after audience on LinkedIn. These professionals tend to have higher CPCs because advertisers are willing to pay more to reach them.

Some advertisers in the healthcare industry also may be willing to bid higher for ad placements, which can drive up CPC. Aggressive bidding strategies can be common in highly competitive fields such as Healthcare.

Expert recommendation: Are you paying enough attention to your LinkedIn Ads quality score? Advertisers should prioritize aiming for higher quality scores as they directly reflect user experience and let LinkedIn know whether the audience finds your ads engaging. No platform wants to showcase ads that seem to be annoying to the audience and could potentially drive them off the platform.

LinkedIn Conversions

Across all industries, the median number of conversions on LinkedIn Ads for September 2023 was 9.

Let’s take a closer look at the LinkedIn Ads conversions across different industries:

The Technology industry records the highest number of conversions based on our latest Benchmark Groups data, and the reason could be that technology professionals often seek out thought leadership content and industry insights.

LinkedIn provides a platform for sharing whitepapers, webinars, and articles, allowing tech companies to showcase their expertise and attract leads who are interested in learning more.

Expert recommendation: The LinkedIn Ads Manager isn’t exactly the most intuitive interface for digital advertisers… especially if you’re just starting out on the platform. More often than not, you need to run through different reports, compile all your key data, and then transfer it to a spreadsheet to make sense of it. But there’s a much easier way to do it – simply download our free LinkedIn Ads Overview Dashboard and streamline this entire process. In just a few minutes, you can connect your LinkedIn account, add your key metrics, and transform them into understandable visuals.

Microsoft Advertising Spend 

Across all industries, the median Microsoft Ads spend for September 2023 was $879.11.

Let’s take a closer look at Microsoft Ads spend metric across different industries:

Based on our Benchmark Groups data, the Health & Wellness industry spends the least amount of money on Microsoft Ads.

This can be because the Health & Wellness industry might target a specific audience that is more active on other platforms. The primary audience for health-related products or services may tend to use other search engines or social media platforms more frequently, while the industry allocates its advertising budget accordingly.

Even though missing Microsoft Ads data for many industries, Benchmark Groups reveal something interesting for a few of them: SaaS, Technology, and Information Technology and Services spent more on Microsoft Ads in September 2023, than on Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and Linkedin Ads. They also got more Clicks on Microsoft Ads than on Google Ads and Linkedin Ads.

Expert recommendation: Don’t give up on Microsoft Ads before you give them a proper try. For many keywords, Bing is a lot more cost-effective than compared to Google Ads, which allows you to capture a wider audience at half the price. Sure, you might not get as much traffic, but the quality of it can be good enough to keep you on the platform.

Microsoft Advertising Clicks

Across all industries, the median number of clicks on Microsoft Ads for September 2023 was 561.

Let’s take a closer look at Microsoft Ads clicks across different industries:

Within the industries that we have data for the Technology sector recorded the highest number of clicks on Microsoft Ads per our latest Benchmark Groups data, while the Construction industry is on the other side of the spectrum.

The reason for this poor performance could be that the Construction industry typically has a more specialized and niche audience. It may not appeal to as broad a demographic as the technology industry, resulting in fewer potential clicks on Bing.

Expert recommendation: While clicks are one of the most relevant metrics you’ll need to track in your campaign, make sure you consider them in context with other PPC metrics. Sometimes, you might even notice that you’re getting fewer clicks, but your conversion rate is amazing. This could mean that you’re messaging is on point and that you’re segmenting the buyers from those who aren’t still serious about their purchase.

Microsoft Advertising CTR

According to data from Benchmark Groups, the median CTR on Microsoft Ads for September 2023 was 1.81%.

Let’s take a closer look at the Microsoft Ads CTR across different industries:

All of the industries we examined have a higher CTR than 1% on Microsoft Ads.

In less competitive niches like Information Technology and Construction, advertisers on Microsoft Ads might see higher CTR because there are fewer advertisers bidding for the same keywords.

Expert recommendation: To make more sense of your CTR data and get a holistic look at your Microsoft Ads performance across the entire campaign, you can use our free Microsoft Advertising Overview Dashboard. Instead of spending hours drilling into your data and extracting relevant insights, you can now do it within minutes by connecting all of your key Microsoft Ads metrics in one place.

Microsoft Advertising CPC

According to data provided by Benchmark Groups, the median CPC on Microsoft Ads for September 2023 was $1.03.

Let’s take a closer look at the Microsoft Ads CPC across different industries:

The level of competition in an industry is a major determinant of CPC. In some industries, like Technology, there is fierce competition for keywords, leading to higher CPC. In contrast, the Consulting & Professional Services industry may have fewer competitors, resulting in lower CPC.

Expert recommendation: A lower CPC isn’t a sign that you can kick back and relax. Make sure you monitor your CPC thoroughly so there aren’t any unexpected spikes that can quickly dry up your ad budget before you have a chance to respond. Ideally, it would be best if you were examining your CPC at least a few times a week.

Microsoft Advertising Conversions

According to data from our Benchmark Groups, the median number of conversions on Microsoft Ads for September 2023 was 26.

Let’s take a closer look at Microsoft Ads conversions across different industries:

As it stands, the Technology sector had the highest number of conversions on Microsoft Ads in September 2023, but there’s still a lot of data missing from other industries to paint a more comprehensive performance picture.

Expert recommendation: One method you can use to boost your conversion rate on Microsoft Ads is to avoid generic funnel targeting. By this, we mean you shouldn’t be focused on targeting broader keywords that don’t directly relate to your product or service (at least not at first). While you might drive more traffic to your website, it won’t be of the same quality as with more specific keywords.

Digital Advertising Benchmark Groups for All Industries

All the data we showcased in this article comes from Databox’s Benchmark Groups.

Benchmark Groups are designed to help companies assess their performance by comparing their data directly to similar-sized competitors in the same industry. This way, you can easily spot room for improvement in your campaigns but also see where you’re ahead compared to others.

Anyone can join Benchmark Groups for free, and the data you share is 100% anonymous – both for you and your competitors.

While we already have lots of actionable insights from this group, there are still some missing areas for certain digital advertising channels. To help us create a more comprehensive benchmark picture that will also help you better gauge your performance, join the Benchmark Group relevant to your specific industry or the group for all industries. More contributors equal more actionable data for everyone involved.

Below, we created a list of all Benchmark Groups we used to create this report. To review the group most relevant to you and join, you just have to click on the link:

• Apparel & Footwear
• Automotive
• Construction
• Consulting & Professional Services
• E-commerce & Marketplaces
• Education
• Food
• Health Care
• Health & Wellness
• Information Technology & Services
• Industrials & Manufacturing
• Real Estate
• SaaS
• Technology
• Travel & Leisure

Leverage Benchmark Groups to Maximize the Performance of Your Digital Advertising Campaigns

Scaling digital advertising campaigns and optimizing for performance can sometimes feel like unscrambling an egg… and the fact that most platform ad managers are not very user-friendly and intuitive doesn’t help one bit.

More often than not, digital advertisers have to scramble through dozens of reports, collect their data onto a separate spreadsheet, and spend hours in spreadsheets cleaning the data and then reading it.

And as if that weren’t frustrating enough, once you finish your analysis, you can’t even tell objectively whether your data is on par or not. Sure, reading industry reports and talking to similar-sized companies can help to some degree, but that’s still not the ultimate solution.

Well, Databox’s Benchmark Groups are turning things around.

Worrying about whether your performance is in line with what others in the niche are seeing is a thing of the past. Now, you can see how you stack up against them in just seconds.

Whether you run Facebook Ads, Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Microsoft Ads, or any other advertising platform, you can find relevant insights once you join the specific cohort tailored for your business.

Not only that, but you’ll also spot emerging opportunities in real-time and stay ahead of your competition by optimizing your strategies before they even notice something’s wrong with them.

Sign up for free and get a taste of how easy performance optimization can be with Benchmark Groups.

The post Digital Advertising Benchmarks by Industry for 2023 appeared first on Databox.

You want to know how your company (or team) is performing. Are you trending up or down? What’s the improvement from last month? What’s going well, and what should we pay attention to? In short, “How are we doing?”

The question is simple and straightforward. The answer isn’t.

To find it, you need numbers. Numbers that are currently distributed across your CRM, ad platforms, and website analytics. You’ve got to go into each tool, find the most important ones, and put them together to form a summary of your company’s health.

But what if you didn’t have to do all that? What if, every time someone asked “How are we doing?” you opened one screen, and saw the answer?

Well, now you can. We call it Performance Summary. In one glance you’ll get a short, but comprehensive understanding of your most important metrics, goals, and dashboards in a nicely written summary.

Plus, they’re personalized to each team member in your account. So your marketing, sales, CS, and financial team can now see how they’re doing too, and share that update with the rest of the team.

Understand How You Are Doing In Seconds

Performance Summaries offer personalized insights and recommendations for your metrics, goals, and dashboards, allowing you to…

• Quickly understand how you’re performing and make smart decisions that help the business grow.

• Gain valuable context and insights into your metrics, goals, and dashboards as you work.

• Spend less time on analysis, and more on driving results – implement improvements, fine-tune strategies, and work towards achieving your goals.

How To Access Performance Summaries

There are a few different ways you can access Performance Summaries in Databox:

Performance Screen

Performance Summaries are located at the top of your Performance Screen. To create your first summary, add at least three metrics to the Performance Overview section.

Here, Performance Summaries are based on the metrics and goals added to your Performance Screen. So, you’ll get a more comprehensive summary of your overall performance.

Metrics, Goals, and Dashboard

You can also access Performance Summaries for individual metrics, goals, and dashboards, by clicking on the icon in the top right corner.

Understanding Performance Summaries

Performance Summaries can be divided into four sections: Performance Indicators, Data Summary, Data Insights, and Recommendations.

Performance Indicators

You can use Performance Indicators as a way to quickly evaluate your results. These indicators will change colors depending on your performance, so you can quickly know if your efforts are paying off.

A green indicator would mean that your strategies are working and you’re on the right track. An orange indicator would suggest there were minor fluctuations in your metrics or that your goals are at risk. And a red indicator will point you to the metrics and goals that require your immediate attention.

Data Summary

Data Summary offers a concise, text-based performance overview. With this, you won’t have to spend valuable time contextualizing your data. Instead, you’ll get instant insights that make it even easier to understand how you’re doing and make more informed decisions.

Data Insights

Data Insights are only available on the Performance Screen. You can use them to quickly spot daily or weekly changes in your most important metrics and KPIs. With Data Insights, you can…

• Quickly identify the metric with the highest positive change, so you know where your efforts are working best.

• Pinpoint the metric with the most significant negative change, so you can identify problems early on.

• Determine which priority metric had the highest average value for the specific period, so you can focus your attention on what matters most.

Recommendations

With Recommendations, you’ll get three general suggestions on how to improve your performance. So you’ll spend less time pouring over data and more time executing improvements – with confidence!

Try Performance Summaries Today

Whether you’re a seasoned analyst or new to data; Performance Summaries place relevant, actionable insights at your fingertips. Displayed in an easy-to-understand format, anyone can use data to make more informed decisions.

Ready to experience the power of Performance Summaries? Start a trial of the Growth Plan and get access to a suite of AI-powered features. Don’t stop at data visualizations; get the insights you need to easily compare, predict, and improve your performance.

If you’re new to Databox, getting started is easy. Create a free account and effortlessly connect to 100+ integrations, build custom dashboards, schedule reports, and more – in just a few clicks.

The post New in Databox: Get Personalized, Actionable Insights With AI-powered Performance Summaries appeared first on Databox.

Traditional BI tools are incredibly powerful, but also inaccessible to most growing businesses. They’re expensive, complicated to set up, and usually require resident experts to manage. And simple dashboard or visualization tools lack the advanced functionality you need to make data-informed decisions.

That’s where Databox Analytics comes in. We’ve taken some of the most powerful tools traditional analytics tools offer, integrated them with AI, and made them easy to set up and use. And just as with our dashboard and reporting tools, anyone on your team can use them – no data science experience required.

Don’t just track performance. Improve it.

Top-performing companies use data to make better decisions, identify issues, and uncover opportunities. We’ve taken the most powerful features in enterprise analytics tools and made them easy to set up and accessible to everyone on the Growth plan.

Performance summaries: answer, “how are we doing?” in seconds.

Traditionally, understanding performance and contextualizing data was a task reserved for “experts”. With Performance summaries, anyone (regardless of their experience) can make sense of performance-related data – quickly.

In one view you’ll get a comprehensive summary of where you’re at. Quickly understand if you’re trending up or down. Easily assess your performance with color-coded indicators. Plus, get recommendations and ideas on how you can move the needle on important metrics.

Benchmarks: see where you’re ahead of the curve, and where you need to improve.

Benchmarks are crucial to help you understand how you stack up against companies like yours. You can use them to show your managers, board, or clients that you’re ahead of the competition and headed in the right direction. And you finally answer the question, “is this good?”, and see if you’re spending too much per click, or closing enough deals. Soon, you’ll be able to view benchmarks right within the analytics app, so you can seamlessly integrate performance analysis into your daily workflow.

Pick any metric and tailor your benchmark by selecting from a range of characteristics including industry size, monthly or annual revenue, and more.

Forecasts: make better, data-informed decisions.

What will your traffic, signups, or sales be next quarter? Being able to anticipate future performance is crucial to creating an accurate plan. Now you can eliminate guesswork from strategic planning. With Metric Forecasts, get highly accurate predictions of your most important metrics so you can set goals that are not just realistic but also data-informed.

Get an easy-to-read chart and summary of your forecasted metric. And easily compare your forecasts to your goals and historical data, so you can update your plans in real time.

Anomaly detection: get alerted when things go sideways.

When your ad costs surge, traffic falls off a cliff, or leads dry up, it’s crucial that you get alerted right away. That way, you can evaluate potential causes in real time rather than trying to evaluate what happened months later. To make that easier than ever, we’re launching anomaly detection. You’ll get automatically alerted when a specific number is above or below a threshold.

Get access all our AI-powered analytics tools in one plan

We’ve taken the most powerful features traditional analytics offer, and packaged them in one convenient plan. And like our dashboards, we made them easy to set up and use. Introducing the Growth Plan: for growing businesses who want to use data to make better decisions and improve performance.

View plans and pricing.

Plus, the Databox you love just got better.

Introducing new features and improvements that make it even easier for all users to centralize data, build powerful dashboards, and create beautiful visuals.

Performance screen: see how your most important metrics are performing, in seconds.

Our new and improved home screen allows you to track your progress and review performance at a glance. As soon as you log in to Databox, you’ll get a concise, comprehensive, and personalized view of your 10 most important metrics and goals.

This new performance screen helps you see how you’re doing overall, and how close you are to hitting your goals with color-coded visualizations. You can also see your top-performing and under-performing metrics at a glance, so you better know where to focus your attention. Finally, you can quickly access your 10 last-viewed Databoards, Looped Databoards, and Reports so you can jump back in and pick up where you left off.

Added integrations: connect all your data even more easily.

It’s easier than ever to centralize all of your data into Databox. We’ve added new one-click integrations for SaaS, eCommerce, and marketing agencies, revamped our metrics, and built new Metric Builders to improve the way you sync data to your account – and the list keeps growing!

Metric library: learn about (and improve) any metric.

With our new and improved Metric Library, anyone on your team can quickly get the information they need for any metric. Just select a metric to quickly learn how it’s defined and measured, view benchmarks, and discover best practices to improve it.

New chart visualizations: uncover opportunities with new visualizations.

Choosing the right visualization for your data is crucial. The right chart style will help you spot trends, or uncover new insights or opportunities you wouldn’t have seen otherwise. With new visualizations and more powerful charts, uncovering these opportunities has never been easier.

Add multiple metrics to a single visualization to better understand how different data points relate to each other. Leverage charts like Radial Progress, Spider Diagrams, Bubble Charts, and Data Stories to turn complex data into easy-to-understand insights. Plus, add multiple comparison periods to get more insights. You can also customize your chart’s colors to present your data however you want.

Report & dashboard templates: set up reports and dashboards in 1-click.

From the start, we’ve been obsessed with making it as easy as possible to track and share your data with your clients, team, or shareholders. With our new dashboard and report templates, you won’t have to build these reports or dashboards from scratch. We’ve added more metrics and integrations to the templates, to give you a head start in visualizing or sharing the data you need.

Just find the template that best aligns with your role or goals (web performance, SEO, social media, and more), and add it to your account in 1-click. From there, you can make changes to customize it to your needs.

Dashboard designer: build custom dashboards even faster.

Building custom dashboards has never been simpler. Our new dashboard designer boasts a clean and intuitive design, making the process of creating and updating dashboards a breeze – regardless of your level of experience.

You can add data from multiple sources into a single dashboard with just one click. Or, quickly switch between different visualizations to find the best way to represent your data.

Account & security management: safeguard your data.

Keeping your data safe is our top priority. We’ve enhanced our security measures with added features like Force SSO, Two-Factor Authentication, and advanced password protection to keep your data confidential.

Not a Databox user yet? Get started now.

We’ve evolved into more than just a visualization tool, and are excited to continue advancing our mission. With Databox Analytics, we’ve bridged the gap between powerful enterprise solutions and simple visualization tools. Our commitment to simplicity means that now, more than ever, anyone on your team can become data-informed and leverage data to grow.

Try our new, all-inclusive Growth Plan to experience the power of Databox Analytics. From Performance Summaries to Forecasts, you’ll get access to a suite of AI-powered features that will help you centralize and visualize your data, share your insights, and make better data-informed decisions to improve performance.

If you’re new to Databox, start by creating your free account. Then, connect your data with over 120 one-click integrations and easily build custom dashboards to track your most important metrics. Automate your reporting, collaborate with your team, proactively monitor your performance, and so much more!

The post Introducing Databox Analytics appeared first on Databox.